#˒ *･ﾟ⨯ ch. ( anakin ) ◞ ⎸ 𝙸 𝚂𝚃𝙰𝙽𝙳 𝚄𝙿𝚁𝙸𝙶𝙷𝚃 𝙱𝚄𝚃 𝙼𝚈 𝚂𝙷𝙰𝙳𝙾𝚆 𝙸𝚂 𝙲𝚁𝙾𝙾𝙺𝙴𝙳.

[skysaunter]

@tapalslegacy 𝚜𝚊𝚒𝚍 :: “Dad, what does love feel like?”

              𝚂𝙺𝚈𝚆𝙰𝙻𝙺𝙴𝚁’𝚂  𝚃𝙷𝙾𝚄𝙶𝙷𝚃𝚂  𝙷𝙰𝙻𝚃𝙴𝙳  𝙰𝙱𝚁𝚄𝙿𝚃𝙻𝚈 ,  his heart skipping a beat as a sudden surge of panic lanced through his chest.  blue eyes shot up, snapping from the assortment of outer-rim delicacies laid before them to sweep across the temple gardens — silent, still, and empty.   𝐀𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐄.   yes, they were still alone.   relief washed over him, but the reprieve was thin, fleeting.

         ❝cal. . .❞   the jedi knight’s voice was low, an amalgamation of warning and affection, but the weight behind it was unmistakable.  ❝you know what i said about calling me that.❞  despite the edge of reprimand, a warm, frightening softness spread through him.     dad.     the single syllable resonated deeply, a secret joy, even in its danger.  he exhaled slowly, his eyes narrowing as he surveyed the garden once more.  ❝what if someone heard?❞

the thought gnawed at him.       the consequences were unthinkable.   the rare moments he could steal away from the front lines to visit cal—those precious intervals of peace—would vanish.  it wasn’t just the time that was at risk, but something far darker.

anakin didn’t dare imagine what might happen if someone overheard.  he couldn’t.  the alternatives were too grim.  one misstep, one careless word, and everything could unravel.  it wouldn’t end well.

      not for cal.  not for him.  not for anyone.

because if there was one fragile, unwavering tether holding anakin skywalker to the light, it was cal kestis.  the boy he had pulled from the brink of death, whose very existence now served as a bulwark against the creeping shadows festering in his own heart.   cal was more than a beacon; he was a 𝐌𝐄𝐑𝐂𝐘.  in the unrelenting darkness of the clone wars, cal’s presence was a bright flame that could quiet the insidious whispers in his mind, the only thing that could still the rising tide threatening to pull him under.

anakin set down his utensil with deliberate slowness, his thoughts still simmering as he turned to cal.   ❝love is. . .❞  he paused, wrapping a hand around his chin, the words coming as if dredged from a place deeper than he expected.  ❝it’s everything at once—the best and the worst.  it’s warmth, safety, happiness. . . but it’s also scary.  because once you have it, you’ll do anything not to lose it.  and that’s the hard part—it’s a responsibility.  but when it’s worth it, you’ll fight for it.  even when it’s terrifying.❞

[skysaunter]

              𝙸𝙽𝚂𝚃𝙴𝙰𝙳  𝙾𝙵  𝚁𝙴𝙰𝙲𝚃𝙸𝙽𝙶  𝚆𝙸𝚃𝙷  𝙰𝙽𝚈  𝚂𝙷𝚁𝙴𝙳  𝙾𝙵  𝚂𝙸𝚃𝚄𝙰𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽𝙰𝙻  𝙰𝚆𝙰𝚁𝙴𝙽𝙴𝚂𝚂  or even showing a hint of self-preservation, aeron made his confused indignation clear through his incessant fussing, increasingly loud verbal protests, and a barrage of indignant, accusatory back-talk. it had been a long, long time since anakin had dealt with anyone this loud.   even the most reckless of street thugs seemed to understand, on some basic level, the virtue of silence in places like this, where the walls were barely thicker than a sheet of cardboard and voices carried down the pipes…

if this had been anyone else—some run-of-the-mill delinquent instead of anakin’s last remaining blood relative—the obnoxious fussing would have quickly earned aeron a swift punch to the jaw, no hesitation, and a gag shoved squarely into his mouth with a few zip-ties around his wrists and knees just to minimize any unnecessary movement.  it wasn’t personal, really, just precautionary.

❝all right, then.  guess introductions are in order,❞ he began, his voice steady, but his gaze sharp.  ❝name’s anakin. i’m twenty-eight, a widower, and i’ve got three kids.  luke and leia are twins, and cal’s my oldest.  i run a chain of auto shops called the 501st and a restaurant in the city—azure angel.  and in case you’re wondering, people in your world know me as vader.❞ anakin paused, his tone flat and expression unrevealing.  ❝thought you should know who you’re talking to.❞

anakin was aware of the irony; his supposed twin, separated at birth, had somehow landed in the same line of work as himself, yet still managed to make the kind of rookie mistakes that would have ended the careers of most criminals long ago.  mistakes that, in anakin’s world, were unforgivable.

❝i don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we look alike.  and you looking like me isn’t a coincidence.  we’re related, and i want to know more.  i want the truth.  who the hell are you, and where the hell have you been all this time?❞  left between irritation and a grim sense of familial obligation, anakin shifted in his seat, slapping both his palms over his knees as he leaned forward to meet aeron’s gaze.

               ❝your last name’s myricks.  i don’t know anyone by that name—it means nothing to me.  but what about you?  ever heard of the name skywalker?  or a shmi skywalker?❞

AERON HAD PLENTY OF GUNS IN HIS BEDROOM, hidden under the platform bed in a locked compartment of sorts. He knew better than to try to run back there. These two goons were way bigger than his smaller frame. So when he was told to throw some pants on - or one of the guys threw them in his face - he complied instantly. He knew a lot of things. It could be one of the guys he killed and their goons were coming after him, or it was someone wanting something.

Myricks couldn't image any loose ends. He was normally good about getting any witnesses. Well, save for once. When his mask broke because the guy landed a punch on him was the only time he had become comprised. It could be possible it was from that one incident. Honestly, it was the only thing he could think of. Considering he was learning about the city and still becoming established, he could only rely on his habits and ways. He had little else to fall back on. At times, he could be sloppy, he knew that. His ADHD had gone unnoticed largely until he sought help from a shrink.

Sitting there shirtless, he felt a bit vulnerable. One of the goons had taken the bullets off the coffee table and then moved it against the wall. He hated that they were touching his stuff like he had no say in the matter. Aeron made the mistake and sat up in protest. Damn him if he would let them wreak his place. Both men grabbed his arms and forced him down again. "Back the fuck off!" He only calmed down until he realized that struggling was pointless and he saw the man that entered.

His father had told him his whole family died. Told him they were the last ones left and now suddenly he was staring at the mirror image of him. A man who looked cleaner, and more in control than he was. Oh, and he spotted a slight New York accent. One that was different because he sounded more from LA. He had heard him speak while he was telling the men to knock it off. "Yeah, fellas... lemme breathe for Christ's sake."

He never thought he would be in this situation honestly, Myricks swore after Cadgon never would he be in a situation where he was not in the upper hand. Five years of complete torment, physically and mentally made him break before he killed the man. It was a promise he made himself. Why he only took hits that revolved around people who caused suffering to some degree. It was his way of controlling his trauma and helping others. It created a balance he so separately sought after.

"Then leave. You can and I won't cause a fuss." Maybe he would actually keep his promise this time and not lash out. Who knew, but Aeron was certain this guy meant business if he had gone through the trouble of coming to Queens just to barge in his apartment. "Well, I know nothing. Fucking nothin'. So why don't you spill, because I'm completely f'in clueless."

[skysaunter]

@wraekage 𝚜𝚊𝚒𝚍 :: "morning, sleepyhead.  you've been resting for a while." (anakin)

              𝚂𝙺𝚈𝚆𝙰𝙻𝙺𝙴𝚁’𝚂  𝙴𝚈𝙴𝚂  𝚂𝙽𝙰𝙿𝙿𝙴𝙳  𝙾𝙿𝙴𝙽 , his breath catching in his throat as he jerked upright, heart hammering in his chest.   his pulse thundered in his ears, drowning out everything else as his mind scrambled to catch up with his body.   disoriented, he scanned the still shadowy contours of the campsite.   when had he fallen asleep? the question was a blur, an afterthought.  the only thing he could recall with clarity was the hypnotic murmur of water lapping against the distant shore, the constant reminder of a planet drowning in water—a sound that only deepened his unease.

planets with an abundance of water always set him on edge, their landscapes unnervingly foreign.  the ever-present humidity clung to his skin, and the scent of brine seemed to permeate everything.  he exhaled sharply, running a hand across his face.  his cheek felt warm and numbed from pressing against his forearm, and the dull ache of his muscles reminded him how deeply he had succumbed to exhaustion.

            blast it.  he hadn’t meant to pass out—especially not here, and especially not in violet’s presence.  yet, despite his irritation, a faint, traitorous clarity threaded through his thoughts: he felt rather. . . rested.

❝sleeping?❞ he scoffed, voice rough with the remnants of sleep.  he ran a hand through his hair, trying to shake off the grogginess that surely dulled his usual edge.   ❝i was—uh, meditating.❞ he waved her off with a dismissive flick of his hand, though his tone faltered slightly, betraying his attempt to feign confidence.  ❝you should try it sometime.❞

[skysaunter]

Anakin! You have to try some of this tea from Stewjon, it's supposed to make your tongue glow.

              ❝𝙻𝙴𝚃  𝙼𝙴  𝙶𝚄𝙴𝚂𝚂,❞  𝚂𝙺𝚈𝚆𝙰𝙻𝙺𝙴𝚁  𝙱𝙴𝙶𝙰𝙽 ,  amusement bending the corner of his mouth as he trailed a skeptical glance down the tall glass cradled in his master’s hands.   ❝is this is one of those ‘ancient stewjoni brews’ you’re always going on about?  does it come with a lecture, or is it just the tea this time?❞

[skysaunter]

               𝙱𝙴𝙲𝙰𝚄𝚂𝙴  𝚆𝙴  𝙰𝚁𝙴  𝙹𝙴𝙳𝙸 ,  𝙱𝙴𝙲𝙰𝚄𝚂𝙴  𝚃𝙷𝙴  𝙶𝙰𝙻𝙰𝚇𝚈  𝙽𝙴𝙴𝙳  𝚃𝙷𝙴  𝙹𝙴𝙳𝙸 , skywalker’s thoughts thundered through his mind, a cascade that rang with more despair than conviction.  resentment, rooted in his past struggles, surged beneath the surface, clawing its way up from the darkest recesses of his mind. his past had left its scars, many jagged wounds still festering to this day, but now was neither the time or place to indulge them.

instead, the knight reached for his utensil, the cool metal grounding him as he began prodding at the delicate custard tart on his plate. its golden surface glistened in the soft light, colored by the vibrant pink camby berries, but the tart’s sweetness failed to tempt him. the act was mechanical, an excuse to occupy his hands, to fill the silence stretching between them.

anakin could sense cal’s confusion mounting.  the boy’s wide eyes, a shade too perceptive for his mere eight years, studied him with unspoken questions.  he picked at a berry glazed in sugar.   what could he say?  what should he say?   every response felt inadequate, the weight of his own conflicting sentiments far too burdensome to place on the shoulders of a youngling. and yet, despite the turmoil, a flicker of pride ignited. cal kestis was sharp. too sharp, perhaps.  there was a keenness in the boy’s gaze that belied his tender age, a brightness that outshone the innocence he should still possess.

at barely waist-high, cal already seemed to grasp more than he should about the complexities of the galaxy and the jedi who served it. that intelligence was a double-edged blade, one that needed careful guidance.  honest answers. . . he couldn’t share them with cal. not yet. there were things, many painful things, that a child of his age would never understand.  and it was better that way.  cal would have to reckon with some hard truths of his own someday.

          ❝because some things are worth all the pain in the world,❞ anakin remarked at length. like you. a smile flickered across his lips, rueful but fleeting, and quickly replaced by something darker. his thoughts then turned inward, pulling him into a vortex of memories: young cal kestis, full of promise and untapped potential, his hope for a shared future as master and padawan—and then there was his mother, shmi skywalker, whose sacrifices had laid the foundation for everything he was now.

a familiar, gnawing ache began fraying the edges of his mind, and anakin’s jaw clenched as it took root: what if shmi had chosen the path of least resistance, as so many had done?  the question was like a blade, sharp and unrelenting.  what if she had abandoned him to fate, cut ties with a force-spawned child who had done nothing but burden her?  her life would have been far simpler, unencumbered by the weight of an extra mouth to feed, the crushing responsibility of a son whose very existence tied her to a planet where survival was a daily struggle. . . but that wasn’t what shmi skywalker had done.

  despite every hardship, every obstacle thrown in her path, she had carried him—fought for him.  she’d given everything to ensure his survival.  and she had ultimately paid the price for it.

unaware of the storm brewing inside him, anakin’s gaze fell on cal.  the boy, innocent in his naïveté, had no concept of the lengths anakin would go to protect him, or what terrible things he would say or do to keep him safe. like his own mother had.   but maybe that was for the better, too.   some truths, he knew, were far too heavy for a youngling to bear.  and some things were better left unsaid, buried deep where they could never reach cal’s ears—or his heart.

                ❝don’t overthink it.❞  anakin’s grin barely brushed the edges of his expression before fading away.  ❝love takes many forms,❞ he continued, though his words carried an undertone of something heavier—something unspoken.  ❝look inside yourself.  what do you feel when we’re talking like this? what do you feel when i visit you?❞

☾⋆｡ °✩ 𝐀 𝐔𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐒𝐈𝐋 𝐇𝐀𝐋𝐅𝐖𝐀𝐘 𝐓𝐎 𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐌𝐎𝐔𝐓𝐇, cal paused his movements, listening intently to what the other had to say. he always thought that anakin skywalker knew everything. how could he not? he was older and his rank preceded him. not only that, there was the child's assumption that the chosen one can never be 𝐰𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠; in fact, it was so silly to think that those words could exist in that very order.

the topic of love lingered in his mind. he knew of anakin's former romantic relationship with senator amidala, and how it wasn't necessarily permitted, let alone right, in any sense. yet why was it so valuable? what made it worth the risk of losing everything ? anakin would be stripped of not only his rank, but also his place in the jedi order ( cal thinks ). this all in mind, was love really worth that much to anakin?

his cheeks heated up, blood coloring his fair, freckled skin with a rosy hue. lowering his utensil in hand, he took a look around as a precaution to ensure that they were, indeed, alone. satisfied with his observation, cal turned back to anakin. “ no one heard. we're fine. ” the statement was punctuated by a wide, 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐝 smile. “ and besides, i'm always careful. ” arrogance.

then, he went quiet as he allowed the bestowed knowledge to sink in. there was a lot to take in, but most importantly, what was bothering―and perplexing to―cal was the 𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐲. how can that be possible? and before he could even reel his thoughts all in, they cascaded out. “ i don't get it. how can it be the best and the worst thing at the same time? if it made you feel bad, why would you continue to love? why go through ― ” he rolled his wrist, waving the utensil in a small circle “ ― all that trouble to keep it? ”

he directed his gaze towards the jedi knight, brows scrunching in thought, his head filling up with even more questions than answers. he thought the jedi knight's answer would be simple, yet it just frustrated him further. heavily under the impression that anakin skywalker was above the jedi order and it's rules, it's regulations, another idea crossed his mind. “ do you think i can know what it feels like, one day ? ”

after all, anakin skywalker 𝐜𝐚𝐧'𝐭 be wrong, especially if what he does is opposite of the jedi's teachings. if anyone was wrong, 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐣𝐞𝐝𝐢. “ maybe it's the jedi who are wrong for not allowing attachments. ”

[skysaunter]

               𝚂𝙺𝚈𝚆𝙰𝙻𝙺𝙴𝚁  𝚂𝚃𝚁𝙾𝙳𝙴  𝙳𝙾𝚆𝙽  𝚃𝙷𝙴  𝙷𝙰𝙻𝙻𝚆𝙰𝚈 ,   his hard blue gaze fixed on the numbered door ahead: apartment 8108.  it was precisely two in the afternoon—the only sliver of time he could carve from his busy schedule to manage something as pressing, yet personal, as this.  flanked by rex and cody, he reminded himself to keep any trace of frustration out of his tone; this encounter would require restraint.

today’s briefing had devolved into a mess of finger-pointing, evasive half-answers, and, naturally, the unmistakable sound of someone desperately coughing their way through an explanation that probably sounded better in their head.  it was the kind of chaos he’d come to expect over the past three months.

at least now, he understood the root of these disturbances—none of which were his doing, which was a strangely comforting revelation: none of this, technically, was his fault.  no, the bewilderment, the loose threads, the daily parade of newly revealed “issues” could all be traced back to a single person.  a young man currently residing in apartment 8108, who, objectively, hadn’t acted out of outright malice…  still, his actions had left anakin with a string of troublesome consequences, messes that would require considerably more than a simple hand-wave to “take care of.”

                ❝ease up—let him breathe,❞ anakin instructed, watching as rex and cody wrestled the young man onto the couch, their hands settled firmly on either side of aeron’s bare shoulders.  pinned between them, there was no escape.

under normal circumstances, orchestrating a “disappearance” was a simple matter for anakin.  knowing the right people always helped, but his direct, unfiltered access to the NYPD’s internal channels was what truly set him apart in the underworld.  the issue?   aeron myricks, a supposedly up-and-coming hitman, had acted without the department’s ‘special preauthorization’ for the relevant disappearances, which left anakin to dig into his own resources to make those homicide cases, inconveniently flagged as unresolved, “disappear.”   what a fuckin’ headache.

❝believe me, i didn’t plan for things to get this messy.❞  dragging a chair from the dining table, anakin positioned it directly in front of aeron before dropping into the seat with a heaving sigh.  ❝you want answers?  so do i.  and i’m not going anywhere until we both get what we want.❞

Plotted Starter.

AERON KNEW HE WAS IN DEEP from the moment he entered into the world of hitmen. Maybe the clue was him seeing two goons at his apartment door while he opened it up in his boxers. The other wake up call was seeing a mirror image of himself standing there after he was dragged in and told to get some pants on before them grabbing his arms. This guy was better dressed and seemed to have an authority about himself as well. He blinked a few times to see if the other went away as he was shoved into a chair. "Can you call your goons off, for fuck's sake?" Those two lug heads were bigger than him. If he hadn't been half asleep from scouting a new hit all night, maybe he would have some common sense to have been carrying a gun to the door.

"And can someone tell me what the living fuck is goin' on and why you look like me?!" Myricks really wanted answers. He was trying to come up with an answer, but nothing came to mind. If his father was still alive, he would have demanded him to spill why he had a twin suddenly.

@skysaunter